Her, Saving Grace

16

Catherine

"It's a lot to take in huh?" Benjie was standing beside me. You know the hot one. (Not me though,she-Benjie)

"Well you fellas just happened to be dead people. And I'm living with a not-dead reaper. Nothing to get scared shizless about." Facing the glass window on Damon's office, I can see almost everything from here. I guess this is his way of overlooking things. I can imagine him saying 'No, the murderers are on the tires' stockroom.'

"You'll get used to it." he-she patted my back. Okay I'm really confused. What do I call him?

I give up. I'm calling her Gina.

"How did you die?" Hah. Never thought I'd ask that question.

Gina smiled. "Was a soldier. Got no place to go and just joined the army at eighteen. Served for more than thirty years. Base got bomb. Everybody died. The usual." I nodded and saw Mikey and Raph come out from two different doors at the far end of the garage.

"How did everybody else die...?"

Gina pointed at a tall lanky man who just got up from under a car. "Thomas over there, drowned." She then pointed to a balding man, holding a mug. "Peter got hit by a car, driver never took responsibility. Poor fellar."

Gina waved as another man looked up to smile at us. "Jonas got kidnapped. Parents didn't have enough money. He got killed after the phone call." she murmured before a man holding a dog entered the Garage. Must be clients. You know, living clients.

"That's Greg and eve. Greg's blind, some fuckers mugged him. Beat the shit outta eve afterwards. Bastards should go straight to hell."

I couldn't breathe. She hasn't even told me how the others died and I felt sick already.

"You're all different." I whispered, placing my hand against the cold glass separating us from all of these...souls.

"It's better this way. Assures the soul that we take here that we know how they feel, and that they're going to be okay."

"So...this is like some sort of purgatory then."

She chuckled. "In a way, yes. It's more of a department."

I saw a glimpse of Damon talking to a woman, three cars away from Bradley. Probably just like Benjie.

"Department? You mean, there are other purgatories?"

She laughed. "If you haven't noticed yet, all of us here died because we got killed, either by other people or while on duty. There's a department for people who died old, people who died young, people who died from a certain illness and those who committed suicide."

"Then why are you guys still here? Aren't you supposed to be in heaven? Or hell?"

"We're here to collect those souls. Once the Big Guy thinks we've done enough, he lets us go. It all depends on how we perform our duties if we're going to end up in heaven or hell. Like another chance on the after-life. Then we get replaced by other souls. It's a cycle."

"Why don't you call him 'God'?" I interjected. Come to think of it, Damon doesn't call Him that too.

"We don't know what his name is. Nobody does really. He has different names for different religions. Depends on the department if they want to call Him a certain name. Same goes with heaven and hell. We don't like criticizing 'em. I mean, what the fck do we know right?" she walked towards the door and gestured for me to follow.

"So...where do the bad guys go?" we were walking down the stairs when I saw three men carrying a huge box.

"Raph and Mikey takes care of 'em. They sort the souls if they're worthy or not."